I recently went on a little weekend adventure with the dog, and although I thought it would have been a nice outing it turned out that I was up for a reminder of the very basics of any outdoor activity.
I wanted to walk through the wooded areas near where I live, sort of like a scouting trip to the surroundings. I made a mental note of the route I wanted to take, after which I packed BCB Crusader cook set, TAD gear softshell, a wooden mug, Canon 500D camera and a very nice instant coffee brewing bag all into my Kifaru E&E. I also wanted to test my brand new Salomon XA Pro 3D MID Forces. So a little bit of walking through woods and fields, and a nice hot cup of coffee brewed with the cooking kit. That was the plan anyway.
A good few hundred meters out I realised that I had forgotten the solid fuel bits for the Crusader. Well I thought that I would improvise and gather some dry twigs and sorts to get a small fire going. A few moments later it hit me that I actually did not have any matches with me.
Having almost put the coffee from my mind, I then got my hopes up again remembering that I might have the BCB Survivor fire starter in the cooking set pouch. With a sense of purpose I gathered some dry hay from the field, some twigs and then found a nice spot of exposed rock on top of a forest hill, set up my cooking set and started to make a fire. Now, I have never really used a survivor fire starter before, but I was familiar with the theory of it. I scratched, scraped, put the hay under, tried a piece of birch bark… all for nothing. I just could not get the fire going. After a good fifteen minutes I gave up, poured the water on the kindling and packed my stuff.
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